Steven Scott (00:01.47) Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Double Tap on YouTube. I am Steven Scott. Shaun (00:06.346) And I am Sean Preece, hello! Steven Scott (00:08.77) Oh, trying out the radio voice. Sorry, how's that working out for you? Shaun (00:12.19) Not very well, I must admit. I can't keep it up, that's the trouble. I can do it for a second and then it just goes back to my terrible accent. I'm so sorry. Steven Scott (00:19.815) Can we say that now? Can we say radio voice? Is it YouTube voice? Is it media voice? What was the right word? Shaun (00:24.934) Oh, I believe it's content creator voice. No, awful, yes. Ha ha ha. What are we talking about today, Steven Scott? Steven Scott (00:28.638) Oh, I don't like that. That's two words. Yeah. Enough to remember. Well, I want to talk about you, because you recently changed internet provider, didn't you? Shaun (00:39.087) Oh. Me. Oh I did! Oh okay so you're throwing me under the bus for this episode? Okay. Steven Scott (00:45.227) Hmm Well, I want to talk about your setup, because I recently, well, I'll say recently, maybe the last year, changed my Wi-Fi connection in the house. I got a new mesh network in the house. And I thought we could maybe talk and maybe compare some notes here, because I know how terrible your internet is. I know how terrible it was. And I think that was partly user error and also partly network error. So combined, it was a Sean-sized mess. Shaun (00:57.564) Oh. Shaun (01:05.346) How dare you! Shaun (01:12.724) Error. Shaun (01:16.282) Okay, I'm not going to mention any internet provider names here. Well, I might do actually. Yeah, let's think about that. So, okay. So yes, let's start at the beginning with my internet provider. So when I moved to this new area about five years ago, I went for fiber to the cabinet. So FTC, which means that you have, you get this high speed fiber optic connection, but only to the Steven Scott (01:21.419) Coward. Shaun (01:45.666) telephone cabinet on your street. And then that last little bit of wire that goes from that cabinet to your house is still copper. And that slows things down again. So I tried it and I was getting terrible, terrible speeds. So then I went to another provider which offered fiber to the premises, which means that fiber optic cable is straight into your home, straight into your house, straight into your modem on your windowsill or wherever. And it was great. Steven Scott (01:47.968) Hmm. Steven Scott (02:08.658) Mm. Shaun (02:14.242) The speeds, absolutely fantastic. And it was fine for a while, but then I started to notice that my service wasn't that reliable. Or you started to notice because we have, we get, obviously this is how we work. It's vital for how we do what we do. The daily show, this. I mean, we use services such as Clean Feed or Riverside or whatever it may be, and you need a stable connection. And actually the speed isn't so important. You could have a gigabit. Steven Scott (02:25.247) Yes. Shaun (02:45.266) fast connection, but if that connection isn't stable or it's laggy, then it's no good. You can't use it. And that's what I discovered that even though the burst speeds were good, it wasn't constant. It would go up and down, up and down. So I did make the switch. And when you're looking about which internet provider to go to... It's really difficult because they all say the same pretty much. They all offer the same sort of speeds. They all say it's 100% reliable and they all say they've got the best Wi-Fi hub or router that they offer and they supply that for you and it will give you rock solid Wi-Fi all around your house. It never does by the way, ever. But this is where I turn to you Stephen Scott, the Oracle of tech. I thought he'll know and I got a recommendation from you. of where to go because you recently, well as you said, you switched over your internet provider and you're on gigabit and you have nothing but great things to say. Steven Scott (03:48.082) Yeah, I switched over to a company three years ago, actually. It was just, yeah, 2021, because the work had started in the area I live in to enable the entire village to get internet, not internet, generally. I mean, I had internet before that. Electricity was last year. Yes, that's right. We ran everything on fire. We ran the internet on fire. We ran everything. Fire is amazing. But unfortunately, it can't get out of control. So they decided to move away from that. Shaun (03:52.434) Wow, was it that long? Shaun (04:03.718) entire village. I'm fire! Steven Scott (04:16.75) and moved to electricity and actual proper internet. So they put all the lines in during the pandemic or during lockdown because it was the only work they could continue to do. We thought the whole project would be abandoned when the lockdown happened, but of course, because it was outdoor work, that could continue, which I was quite pleased about. So, but it took, with all the various regulations and rules about who could be in your home and how things could be done, the whole project kind of took a lot longer than planned to get installed. So, about mid 2021, Shaun (04:28.681) No. Steven Scott (04:45.466) I finally got gigabit internet. And I had gone from a standard broadband connection exactly like you're talking about, fiber to the cabinet. So that final route of the internet connection was making its way from a cabinet via copper into my home. Now these were fairly new homes. So I guess the cabling was a little bit better, but even so the speeds were average. They were okay. I was getting about 70 megabits at home, which was okay. But you did start to notice it. And obviously, I'm doing TV shows. I'm doing internet with YouTube and all kinds of stuff that requires not just a good connection, but a solid, continuously solid and good connection. And when I had a gigabit coming, I thought, absolutely, let's get this in. And the company came in. They installed it. And it let me down only once on one day. And I think that's because I did something rather stupid. I shorted. the little box that goes on the wall. I managed to not quite blow it up, but let's just say I shorted it out, which, yeah. Absolutely, Scotland's other national drink, I spilled all over it. And no, it just didn't work anymore. So I had to get a new box, and then the next day I got the box installed, and that was it. That's the only day I've ever had a loss of connection, ever. And I thought, well, that is pretty impressive, actually. So. Shaun (05:47.57) Oh well done. That's very Steven Scott. What did you do to it? Spilt iron brew all over it? Shaun (06:07.586) No, yeah, exactly. So I went with the same company you did. And it's interesting, right, because I would have thought from a technical point of view, it's a fibre optic cable that's been, you know, direct into your house. So why would there be any difference? But there absolutely is. Now, maybe it's with the equipment that these cables are connected to on the internet provider side. Or I don't know what it could be. The amount of people that's on that service on your street can have an impact on speed and reliability, but there is definitely a difference there in between. Steven Scott (06:41.31) And they call that contention, right? So they call that contention ratio, which basically means that, you know, if you have a number of people sharing, not so much the connection, they're not sharing your connection, but there is an amount of a connection available to your area via that cable that comes into your street and kind of snakes off into all the various houses. And then what happens is, you know, like the kids across the road, they love to game. And they're always on gaming. I mean, all the kids probably do it now. They're all gaming and it's all online. Those pesky kids. Shaun (06:55.295) Yes. Shaun (06:59.37) Which is. Shaun (07:06.142) Yes, those kids playing Pac-Man and Space Invaders all the time. Steven Scott (07:11.45) Get off that internet immediately. I'm trying to broadcast, don't you know? Kind of thing. But they're doing that. Obviously, people are watching Netflix, and they're online watching TV, on demand, everything's happening. So internet is used way more than we've used it in the past. It's no longer some passive thing. It's part of everyday lives. We're always on our phones. We're always pulling data from somewhere. So that has an impact. But yes. Shaun (07:28.198) Of course. Shaun (07:37.342) which is why they always say that your experience or speeds may vary depending on the time of day. When everyone gets home from work and turns on Netflix, you're gonna get slower speeds because everyone's using the same pipe. Steven Scott (07:48.874) But at the same time, you've got much better connections coming into your home when it's been put in you like this. So I think I'm hoping anyway, you'll have the same experience I had in getting good speeds. And you've gone for half the connection speed I had, and you've not noticed any difference. I've got gigabit, you've got 500. And your connection seems to me perfectly fine, solid. Shaun (08:06.763) Yes. Shaun (08:10.362) Well, yeah, absolutely so far, touch wood. But again, this comes to the second part of this, this problem though, you've got your internet provider, but then it's getting that signal around your house. which was where the wifi routers come in and your internet service provider will supply you with a wifi router, for example, and they will make all the claims all day of how you'll get rock solid wifi signal in every room of your house. But in my experience, that's never been the case. And I've always had to go third party router, go out and buy your own. And that seems to be more and more of the case now. Mesh routers seem to be the standard, seem to be so popular because so many people are experiencing problems with WiFi range because we're just using it so much more now. We've got smart speakers in every room and more of them. And every phone, every member of your family's got a phone which is connected and a tablet and a laptop. So that WiFi signal. in every room of the house is more important than ever before. And that's where these mesh routers come in. So I've also. Steven Scott (09:19.154) And just to be clear on this, the way it works is it looks like it has a base station, and then it sends a signal to the next base station, and so on and so forth through your house. But it's almost like it's a cloud of beautiful, fairy Wi-Fi dust that is hovering over your house and over the various rooms of your house. And then that dust. Shaun (09:26.815) Yes. Shaun (09:36.203) Oh. I was being- Steven Scott (09:44.938) gets to the next machine and dust gets to the next machine and it just keeps your connection going. Is that right? Shaun (09:49.495) Yeah. I thought you were going to, you know, you stopped me there, rightfully so, to explain what mesh was. I thought, here we go. He's going to get very tech here. But no, it's basically a cloud of fairy dust, which is okay. Yeah. It's magic, obviously. Steven Scott (10:01.91) It is! Because who can you do you know how it works? Exactly, it's magic fairy dust for Wi-Fi. That's all it is. Shaun (10:10.61) It's basically you're buying, instead of just having one box to service the whole house, you have multiple, simple as that, and the boxes connect to each other. They use that wifi to connect to each other and then send that signal out from the other places. So I have. Steven Scott (10:26.814) But hang on, but the reason I want to bring this up is because I think before, when we first saw these kind of devices come out, we had a lot of issues with them. I had a lot of issues with devices like this, because what they did was they repeated the signal. So let's say, for example, you were issuing from a main box 100% signal. The second box might receive 60% of that. And then it would repeat 60% of that signal to the next box. It might get 40, and so it goes on. Whereas mesh is different, it kind of creates a network of its own. So all the boxes are able to get. Shaun (10:38.219) Yes. Shaun (10:49.77) and it would diminish. Yeah. Steven Scott (10:56.954) the same signal level. Now, of course, that depends on so many factors. It depends on the size of your property, the type of walls you have. There are lots of things that can get in the way of that. So let's get geeky for a second, because I'm going to tell you what I got. This is the thing I did get last year. I got the Amazon Eros. I think it's the Eros 6 I've got, which is the, not the pros, I didn't bother with that, but the Eros 6 from Amazon, which is a three unit system. Shaun (11:09.2) Okay. Shaun (11:16.176) Oh nice. Steven Scott (11:26.19) And basically it's prepped all over the house. You've just these different boxes at different points. What's good is the app is very accessible. I can easily set it up. I can also have, what I love about the app is when I go in it will tell me when I place a new box somewhere, if I put a box in there, it will tell me if it's in a good location. It will say, hey, I've got a signal or it's a good signal or it's an okay signal or, you know, if you can maybe move it somewhere else, that'd be better. It gives you an indication and nice clear English language what it is that you should do to get the most out of this. Shaun (11:45.991) Yes. Steven Scott (11:55.386) And so it's actually worked out pretty well. So Amazon Hero 6 is what I went with. What abomination have you got? Shaun (12:02.79) Oh, I've got a couple. My initial one is the, yes, it's the Netgear Orbi. Specifically, I believe it's called the RBK50. Now I got this in 2018, I think, and this is a two piece system. So the main router sits in the hallway next to the front door, and the second one sits at the back of my living room next to the patio doors. And there's literally, I would say, 20 feet between them. Okay. Steven Scott (12:05.842) Couple of abominations. Shaun (12:31.578) And from the one in the living room, I've got an ethernet cable coming out the back, going all the way down the garden and in here into the shed to give me ethernet, to give me the fastest possible speed that I can get from my internet connection. So that's the setup that I was using and it was fine. It was okay, but the wifi coverage upstairs wasn't great. really I could have done with another one upstairs to give better signal upstairs. So the kids were complaining, it wasn't great, they weren't getting great speeds. So I then got the Google 6e Pro router mesh system. And that's a three piece system. So again, pretty much the same setup, one in the hallway, one in the living room with an ethernet cable going to the shed, and the difference being one upstairs. And the wifi coverage was absolutely... fantastic. No dead spots anywhere and I live in a it's called a dormer bungalow but the bungalow bit the walls must be made of lead you know it's an old home but the wi-fi signal really struggles to get through those walls you can be in the next room and it could be dead so um I've got to say it worked really well for wi-fi except the ethernet cable that went to my shed was just the half the speed as what I was getting with the Orbeez. It wasn't great. So it wasn't a great solution. So I've had to change it around a little bit. Steven Scott (14:05.878) Okay, all right. So, you know, that's what you're working with at the moment. And it's going okay. And I want people to comment on this because I'd love to get your set up. So we love talking about setups, right? And I'd love to know what you guys are using out there because, you know, I think it's, once you find what works is great and, you know, nothing's perfect. I'm lucky, I live in a kind of new build house. I say lucky, I'm lucky and unlucky all at the same time because I'm really jealous of your building type because it's solid. I love those kinds of buildings. Shaun (14:09.389) Yes. Shaun (14:29.524) Yes. Shaun (14:34.155) Yes. Steven Scott (14:35.902) the benefit of having a new build is the walls are made of cheese and the signal just passes right through them along with noise along with basically anything else you can think of. So it's good for that. But yeah, I'm quite enjoying the Amazons and what I love is you can add units to it as well. A lot of people talk about ubiquity, which is a very popular and it's a brilliant system. It's very expensive in comparison to say the other systems, although Shaun (14:40.125) Hahaha! Shaun (14:46.433) Yeah. Shaun (14:58.111) Oh amazing. Steven Scott (15:04.658) If I'm honest, you look at some of these costs of these Wi-Fi mesh systems now, they're getting pretty expensive as well. And of course, the more pro you go, the more you'll spend. So I guess in some ways, you may be on a par. And from my understanding, it is a bit more accessible, but it is a little bit more geeky. There's a lot more custom settings. Personally, I'm not looking for that. I'm looking for a simple setup. I think the more you add, the more complexity you bring in, the more problems you potentially store up for the future. So for me, it's... Shaun (15:25.28) No. Steven Scott (15:33.278) Just me, and this is just my thing. I just want a simple life. I want the Wi-Fi to work. I want everyone to be happy. I want everyone, no one complaining. Yeah. Shaun (15:39.658) That's what everyone wants, just easy. And I gotta say the Google Nest Pro setup, just like the Eero's there, so easy. Using the Google Home app, very accessible, straight through, put this one there, give it a name, put that one there, give it a name, and it was done up and running in two minutes. So incredibly simple, I gotta say. But as I said, the ethernet speed from that one. Steven Scott (15:50.081) Mm. Shaun (16:05.61) wasn't as good as the Netgear Orbies, but they were smaller. They're much more, I mean, Sarah absolutely loves them. My partner loves them because they're much more cute and nice looking than these huge shoe boxes that are the Netgear Orbies, but you lose a bit of power there when it comes to some things. So yeah, it's surprising what difference it makes, just taking that time and spending that money. To be honest, I think investing in a decent Steven Scott (16:19.999) Yeah. Shaun (16:35.186) router system is just worth the money because you're spending the money every month anyway on your internet connection and you may be only gaining half the speed that you're paying for because of a internet service provider router that you're using that just isn't up to it. Steven Scott (16:50.506) That's such an important point. You're paying for a service. You want to make sure you get the most out of it. And maybe we should advise people as well. There are a lot of different apps you can use to test your connection at home. You can actually just test it. I know on the web I use fast.com, F-A-S-T.com, which just gives an average speed. And it can give you a bit more detail as well. Any others? Do you use speed test or any of those? Shaun (17:09.037) Yes. Shaun (17:15.222) Those are the two main ones I use. Fast.com is just so simple to use. You simply type it in fast.com, hit enter and bang. It gives you a number there and it's reliable. It's powered by Netflix. It's used primarily to see if you've got, yeah, to see if you've got enough bandwidth there to use Netflix. That was the whole reason for it being created. But it's incredibly easy to use, accessible as well. But speedtest.net is also a great one, very accessible. Steven Scott (17:29.523) Oh is it? Steven Scott (17:36.943) Ah. Shaun (17:45.75) Once you click on the start speed test button, it announces everything through your screen reader. It uses dynamic regions to just say, starting speed test, your speed test is now done, here are your results. So both really accessible and definitely worth a look. I'll be showing you how to use these in the upcoming Shorn of the Shed actually. Steven Scott (18:07.954) Look forward to it. Yeah, brilliant. You can get that on YouTube as well, and you can get it on podcasts. So pick your poison, literally. So next time, I'd like to talk to you next time about VPNs, because I feel this is something a lot of people want to use. But I want to know, I guess, and this is something to think about for next time, and you guys, please do leave your comments on this. I think when it comes to VPNs, I see private relay come up. My messages come up occasionally. I get a notification on my computer saying, oh, you've now got private relay active on your Mac. Shaun (18:15.721) Ha ha Shaun (18:21.081) Oh. Steven Scott (18:38.142) And I think, hang on, is that not VPN by another name? So am I, do I need a VPN? So I'm like, okay, so how safe is my data? How safe is my online presence, I guess? And do I necessarily need a VPN? And what VPNs offer good speeds? So big conversation to be had around that. So let's maybe think about doing that in the future. For now though, do keep in touch. Comment below, you can email us feedback at doubletaponair.com. You can find us. Shaun (18:41.29) Yes. Shaun (19:00.974) Let's try something. Steven Scott (19:06.798) on our website as well. You can watch these videos and more. And you can also catch all of our content on doubletaponair.com. Sean, as always, thank you. We'll catch you next time. Shaun (19:16.578) Thank you, bye bye.